Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

I thought Indian Space Agency was concurrent with Ponds which might be why I didn't take that in. Not that that would make much sense if supposed to be now/present world & Indian space Agency was leading world power.

Actually, it explains Amy's "this isn't how we roll" comment if she hasn't lived last week's episode yet.

apart from the Ponds' age, the Doctor says he's 1200 years old now. he was 900-something at the time of The Impossible Astronaut.

The Doctor's age is not that reliable tbh, it varied massively through the 'classic' series and I don't think has even been consistent in NuWho.

I didn't mind that ep. Enjoyed Ben Browder as Sheriff (Farscape nerd reporting for duty) ... found myself humming the High Noon theme by the end for no good reason. Bit dark, bit silly. Not bad!

Calling the horse "Susan" gave me major lols

Moffatt deliberately makes the Doctor's age unreliable, bcz the Doctor himself has no way of actually measuring it

Rather enjoyed this one. Less hyperactive than usual.

Boring moral dilemmas are boring.

Interestingly, have just watched elsewhere a comparison of the opening titles this season and they've been getting darker each episode. Some other things to note are flickering lights, and we know what they indicate in NuWho...

http://youtu.be/gNaLVAHXJzk

Other things from every episode are eggs (first episode self explanatory, second episode features dinosaur eggs, third has a spaceship shaped like one) combined with choosing to use the word "terminate". "Eggs" "terminate". Well, the Doctor has been getting more ruthless and killing people since he took his anti-dalekisation bracelet off. He's also been mistaken for a medical doctor in both - was he in the dalek episode? Maybe by Oswin?

Might that not just be what happens when you introduce yourself as "The Doctor" and people haven't already heard of you?

I like the general theme of "self-contained stories where Amy and Rory question whether they want to keep doing this but see what happens to the Doctor when they don't" that they have going

I am semi hoping that they meet the new companion when they leave and that knowing the Doctor will be traveling with a humanizing influence allows them to feel better about turning to their own lives but that's really the sentimental fan in me talking; I'm also kind of hoping they both blow up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/sep/15/doctor-who-karen-gillan-arthur-darvill?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/sep/15/doctor-who-town-called-mercy?INTCMP=SRCH

oh the theme is clearly the dr's xmas list, mentioned in eps 2 and 3

http://imageshack.us/a/img651/9366/f3vjy2xuiu6r0tnqspedzq2.jpg

that is terrible

I want one

So, the "I'm 31" comment is explained - it isn't from 2020, they have spent 10 extra years alive in the same time frame due to travelling. Just so we're clear, that means they are 31 when their friends are 21 and their friends HAVE NOT NOTICED they are 50% older. A couple of years I could have understood, but 10? Also Amy says she is working as a travel writer - what happened to modelling? Did she just suddenly give it up when they decided to stay together after AotD? (Although suddenly being 30 overnight might be a good reason, equally though given how famous she was supposed to be would that just not put her on the front covers of papers or at least have them sniffing round for a story wondering why she had miraculously aged that badly?)

I guess I quite liked it but it just felt like another telling of The Lodger. Steven Berkoff horrendously underused and seemed to have turned up in a spare Darth Vader costume (including the panel on the back of his head). Was anybody keeping a clock on how long the people who had died were dead before they were magicked back to life? Long enough for oxygen starvation to the brain? And why were people being kidnapped from the hospital anyway? What was the little girl robot actually for?

Chris Chibnall never fails to disappoint. So many loose ends. And I'm thoroughly confused as to primarily WHY previous seasons have ran in "real time" for the most part - modern-looking Earth = present time Earth (with some exceptions), but now we're in 2020? I'd say its setting us up for some big missing-time subplot, but hopefully its not just left as is.

It explained the 31 thing but not as you have it - all the references from Rory's colleague to his being away for months suggests that the Doctor didn't always return them to the point where they left off. It's been established that the Tardis isn't always reliable - and neither the is the Doctor's own timekeeping. But when he wants to get it right he does.
So I suppose that what was 10 years in the Ponds' life was maybe half that in earth time? This also allows for all the off-screen adventures they have. The Doctor enables Amy's travel writing career for one. Then you have all the stories in the novels etc, although whether they're canon or not is moot.

No, we're not now in 2020. We're in 2016 or thereabouts I think (and the season finale next week is clearly dated as 2018 in a newspaper apparently) as the last series took place over about 2 years and a year passes in this episode alone. But Amy & Rory are several years older than they're supposed to be - Amy says ten years have passed for them since the 'current day' events of The Eleventh Hour but "not that long has passed on Earth".

Except Amy says he does always return them to the same point and this is made explicit by Mark Williams asking how long The Doctor took them away for "this time" despite the fact all they've done is walked from one room to another. Also the Doctor doesn't enable Amy's travel writing - he asks what she does (for the first time, apparently) and is surprised to find she's a travel writer. I would guess having been a world famous model enables being a travel writer far more than a man in a blue box who you describe yourself as having no interface with your 'real' life, or which your job is a part.

Also, Brian Cox and The Apprentice in 2020? Really?

On a sadder Whovian note, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart looks about the right age if it's around 2015.

Ok I see, we're just moving around the not-to-distant future then. Amy's "it's been 10 years" comment through me but then I realized she meant time on earth plus adventure time, which could easily be 10 years. No wonder the Doctor has no idea how old he really is.

*threw me

love the hell out of that episode. I spotted a load of annoyances and loose ends too, but who cares, it was a pond episode, it was about the ponds, and it was heaps of fun

I like to imagine that once in a while they can have some fun and everyone stops panicking about timey-wimey and just enjoys it

Also, Brian Cox and The Apprentice in 2020? Really?

I liked this... didn't make much sense time-wise though. Even better would be a Dragon's Den segment where some guy is trying to sell them something stupid like cube-cozies, with Duncan Bannatyne saying something like, "We all have thees cubes, and we all know they don't do anything. This is an absolutely idiotic product, it won't sell and I'm stupider for seeing it. I'm out!"

I bet cube-cozy patterns/completed units are already up on ravelry and etsy, though. :(

I liked that a lot, even if the end was a bit quickly set up. I don't know what they've been feeding Chibnall this year, but it's working.

I would guess having been a world famous model

To be fair, all we know is she's a model who was used in an ad for a perfume. There's no reason to think she's famous. The girl who asked for her autograph last series did it when there was a big poster of her face nearby.

that was fun and silly

wondering what the deal with the ppl who blew up on the ship was

Amy & Rory supposedly got them all off the ship

Also Amy says she is working as a travel writer - what happened to modelling? Did she just suddenly give it up when they decided to stay together after AotD?

In the other Chibbers ep they discuss how she's dropped several jobs

This was totally a Rusty tribute ep - giant run-around with lots of bits that frustratingly don't make any sense along the way, an ending that contradicts the rest of the episode's set-up, the entire world being menaced as explained through news TV, celeb TV cameos, knife-turns into ~touching~ emotional moments in the middle of the world-threatening action, etc.

Except that Murray Gold was turned down lower than in any episode this year! And wasn't flogging the same three themes over and over that I noticed.

they could easily have thrown in a hand-wave about extended exposure to TARDIS energy making people appear to age slower. it would also cover how amazing Sarah Jane looked in School Reunion! :D

the brig tribute was lovely

surprised Kate was made canon

oh yeah, that was another Rusty-esque thing (though tbf prob just inherently Chibnall to fanwank furiously)

on the timeframe: it seemed REALLY dumb to very specifically name Dragon's Den and Wii (not even Wii U!) and Youtube and Flickr for something set in the future.

2015 definitely seems too soon btw - S5 is set (for Amy and Rory's "home" time) in early 2010.

The beginning of S6 is in early 2011 (with Amy having been abducted by the Silence by September 2010, before she would have HAD to have realised she was pregnant - their "honeymoon" has to have taken many months of home time but fewer of their own experience, as she was knocked up on 26/6/10 but was still a long way off giving birth by 22/4/11).

They have months of adventures and months of being left at home AFTER April during S6, but even if we allow that they got dropped off in The God Complex during 2011, and that Wedding Of River Song took place SHORTLY afterwards, then December 2013 is the EARLIEST that Doctor/Widow/Wardrobe takes place: it's been two years since Wedding, and they have to have had at least two Christmasses in that time, for setting a place to have become a tradition.

Pond Life then presumably takes place during several months of 2014 - I'd rather give a whole extra year to allow the marriage to break down by Asylum Of The Daleks, but it doesn't look like Chibnall and Moffatt have. Anyway, assuming Asylum is 2014, we've then had another two years AT LEAST of off-screen adventures, to allow for verbal references and Amy to go through a few jobs and then settle into travel writing, and then another year just in this episode.

So I reckon we're up to 2017 by the end of Power Of Three, if not 2018.

This is all top-of-the-head though, can someone fact-check me?

no, I cannot

I'm waiting for the updated Time Almanac to make sense of the Pond's timeline... lol.

I honestly can't keep the timeline straight at all so I'm just not going to reckon with it til I have to, plotwise

it's dead easy to ignore (I didn't even consider it until I hit the nerdweb)

This was totally a Rusty tribute ep

Yes! I even wondered part way through whether he'd come back as a guest writer.

You know I'm sure people who own a wii U in a few years time will still refer to it as a wii, much the same way 360 owners still call it "the xbox" now. And I doubt youtube and flickr are going anywhere soon.

I don't think I disagree with yr timings sic, I just pulled 2016 out of my arse because if you were only 18 months dislocated from reality I can't see why you'd whine about it in 40% of the serials unless you were a vain, self-obsessed, oh wait.

I've spent a lot of time living in different towns or even countries from my main groups of friends and don't get to see them all that often and when we see each other that fact constantly bobs up in conversation, unintentionally: the realisation that I haven't been there for something, or that I need to be updated about something, or just the way I see someone again and we have to "catch up" before we can have a normal conversation. And it is fucking wearying. It's the result of choices I've made and I'm okay with that, but the fact that I miss stuff still matters to me and can make me sad, and i am going to mention it, because i'm a human being who has conversations with other human beings about what is going on in my life.

Also, given that this is a television series, the characters Amy and Rory are mentioning this a lot because it is a narrative setup for the bit of the plot in which - SPOILERS - they stop travelling with the doctor.

I would agree if stopping travelling with the Doctor is their choice but Moffatt has described it as "heartbreaking" which doesn't imply it's just a "we decided to stop" conclusion to their story - I mean Rory died multiple times and it still wasn't enough to put Amy off - plus also Brian's "what happens to the people that travel with you Doctor, are they always all right?" "No, Adric died but we all cheered" came from the CLANG school of foreshadowing.

Ok yeah, on that basis my prediction for next week is amy dies rory lives doctor dies too and regenerates into jenna louise coleman.

I would agree if stopping travelling with the Doctor is their choice but Moffatt has described it as "heartbreaking" which doesn't imply it's just a "we decided to stop" conclusion to their story

it's almost as if they're allowed to use several methods of foreshadowing/reminding us that everyone knows they're going to stop travelling with the doctor because of press releases etc.

OR

it's almost as if: they and the doctor decide to stop after thinking about it for a while, rory's dad convinces them to continue, and then something ~heartbreaking~ happens and if they'd just stopped when they decided to they would be ok right now.

I think you're crediting the writing too much, but I can see where you're going.

(apologies if this has been posted numerous times)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8GdRSzQJ0

Maybe the Weeping Angels do something to Amy and Rory where they swap faces

Is Adric the only one that's died, or have there been others? I can't think of any, but it's not like I've watched every episode.